P ♰ C

by Jean Allen

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Last week I wrote of the works Jesus calls us to do: love, acceptance and forgiveness, which, funnily enough, can also be called commandments. But Jesus understood that our hearts are frail, so, he promised his followers to send the Holy Spirit, or as he is often called, the Forgotten Paraclete. Why forgotten? Because in our assiduous attempts to be fruitful in the ways Jesus calls us to be fruitful, we forget that the Holy Spirit is not just an amorphous third member of the Trinity or someone invoked when we do the sign of the cross. The Holy Spirit comes to help us in our weakness; we are not expected to do it all by ourselves.

However, except for once a year at Pentecost, we tend to forget this powerful and loving member of the Trinity who yearns to guide us and is completely willing to come to our aid and bless us with the gifts we need to be on point followers of Christ.

The death and resurrection of Jesus were, indeed, the most universally significant events in Christianity but Jesus sending the Holy Spirit to give power to his followers is almost equally as earth shattering. We truly do not realize what we have been gifted with. Without the Holy Spirit, Christianity would have failed in a generation. We humans just don’t have the capacity to walk in the way of the Lord.

Here’s a prayer that many of you will be familiar with. It is one that is worth memorizing, if only to keep our heads attuned to the presence of the Spirit:

Come, Holy Spirit, and fill the hearts of the Faithful. Enkindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Oh God, who, by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy his consolation. Through Christs, our Lord,

Amen!